BAILEY

A moving and often harrowing account of one young woman's struggle against her childhood demons, Bailey explores the idea of self, and how the psyche can lose its way in a labyrinth of memory, fear and desire. Confined in an asylum, Bailey seeks to emerge from a hazy, tormented existence in which the only solid entity is Jim, her fellow inmate. The problem is that Jim is a creature as haunted as Bailey herself, and their respective pasts cloud a secret that makes their friendship more than a chance encounter. The struggle of Bailey to recover her belief in the goodness of the child she'd been and the growing certainty that Jim Peabody was the hero of her childhood provides the momentum of the story. With its themes of social snobbery, family dysfunction and ultimate redemption, Bailey is a passionate, daring novel that reveals the underbelly of a society that presents itself as the epitome of respectability.

Hawkins' novels, set mainly in the post-hippy doldrums of the seventies and eighties, explore psychological and social themes with a uniquely passionate take on family and personal dysfunction. They deliver biting, often hilarious satire on the snobbish, Anglocentric world of wealthy American society families and are early studies of gender issues, where a non-binary woman tries to fit into a sexist, conservative world. For more, see: www.joanhawkins.net